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Harry Enten of Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com titled a recent post “The More ‘Normal’ Trump Can Make This Race, the Better His Chances.” This is obviously true, and hence every effort by the media to treat Donald Trump as a “normal” presidential candidate brings us closer to the potential destruction of our democracy. And yet we can see it taking place at virtually every level of our media.

Silver recently estimated Trump’s chances of victory at about one in three. Remember, we are talking about a psychopathic narcissist whose alt-right agenda offers so many threats to the well-being of our country and the world, they defy simple enumeration or categorization. Even Republican political professionals are amazed. Scott Reed, chief strategist for the US Chamber of Commerce—who also managed Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, among others—finds it “really quite amazing that after the Trump adventure this is still a competitive race.”

The media deserve a good deal of blame here, not only because of the billions of dollars’ worth of free airtime television networks have given to Trump but also because of their insistence—against all evidence—that he is someone other than the person he clearly presents himself to be.

On September 7, NBC perfectly demonstrated how entrenched the forced normalization of Trump has become. Matt Lauer’s disgraceful performance during the “Commander-in-Chief Forum,” held aboard the battleship Intrepid, proved so egregious that it may have shamed others into taking the Trump threat more seriously. Given a chance to sound presidential and equal in stature to the former secretary of state, Trump made one offensive, idiotic, and demonstrably false assertion after another. Lauer challenged none of them. At the same time, he treated Hillary Clinton’s e-mail choices in office as the most significant national-security issue of the campaign, devoting a third of his questions to her to the topic. (Had the forum taken place four days later, the global threat would have been pneumonia.) Not only were the veterans in attendance reduced to pointless props; so, too, were the issues themselves, since Lauer apparently did not know (or care) enough about them to ask a single intelligent, informed question of either candidate.

It should surprise no one that Lauer’s performance was defended on Fox News by media darling Megyn Kelly and the once-respected media critic (now right-wing shill) Howard Kurtz. Although both Kelly and Kurtz are dishonest, neither is stupid. And so instead of seeking to defend Lauer’s performance on its merits (or lack thereof), they adopted Roger Ailes’s tried-and-true method of changing the subject to attack the so-called liberal media. “You can’t win” with the “left-wing press,” which insists on “kill[ing] Trump,” Kelly insisted. Kurtz also demonstrated how powerfully he has internalized Ailes’s modus operandi, praising Lauer’s “solid job” and adding that the allegedly liberal media believed the host “should have smashed [Trump] to smithereens.”

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Fox has strong reasons to pull for Trump beyond merely ideology and access. By hiring two members of the lunatic white-nationalist fringe to run his campaign—Steve Bannon of Breitbart News and David Bossie of Citizens United and other infamies—Trump may be laying the foundation of a media empire that could challenge Rupert Murdoch from the right, and thereby cost Fox much of its audience. The post-Ailes takeover of Fox by Murdoch’s sons James and Lachlan could make the opportunity irresistible—to say nothing of Ailes’s apparent role as a close Trump adviser. The net result, though far less worrisome than a Trump presidency, would be the further normalization of the hateful nonsense spouted on Fox and by the Trump campaign in the postelection media landscape.

“Every day that goes by, this just becomes more and more of a reality-television show,” Hillary Clinton has observed. “It’s not a serious presidential campaign.” Indeed, not even the reported non-disparagement, non-disclosure agreement between Trump and his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski (nowhere denied though also not proven), nor Lewandowski’s violent manhandling of female reporters on camera, prevented CNN from offering him a lucrative contract as a “political commentator.” Has there ever been a more insulting hire to a group of journalists than this man? Has there ever been a more obvious abdication of the profession’s responsibility to provide audiences with the truth, regardless of whose interests it might serve or injure?

The high-brow Atlantic magazine has also proven itself particularly susceptible to the disease of Trump normalization. Most recently, in a September 2 piece on Trump’s exploitation of voters’ fear, Molly Ball insisted that “critics who accuse Trump of cheap fear-mongering may be failing to recognize that the fear percolating in society is real, and somewhat justified.” Note the use of the weasel-word “somewhat” in that sentence. “Trump paints a fearful picture, and events validate his vision,” she continued—though just what form of “validation” Ball has in mind is not entirely clear. Immigration from Mexico has actually declined in recent years. (India and China each send more immigrants to the United States than Mexico does.) Violent crime rates are flat or falling in almost all major cities. As a nation, we are experiencing, on average, 8,000 fewer murders annually than we did 20 years ago. And do recent terrorist attacks in Paris and California, both of which Ball cites as “validation,” somehow justify Trump’s claim that “Obama was the founder of ISIS”?

Finally, in one of the silliest examples of false equivalence I’ve seen during the entire campaign, Ball equates Trump’s dangerous nonsense with Clinton’s accurate evocation of the potential dangers of a Trump presidency. Clinton, Ball writes, “is now campaigning on a fear-based appeal of her own—the fear of Trump.” Apparently, the only thing we have to fear from a Trump presidency is fear itself.

Failure to understand the lessons of history , makes the repeat of our mistakes probable -
Doing what we know won't work(tried in Viet Nam and now the Middle East)over and over again is the best definition of insanity I know.
The terrorist are only the chickens coming home to roost-and with either Trump or Clinton we can expect more chickens as neither are proposing any thing that changes the basic dynamic of domination now being pursued the US and it's surrogates(Briton-Saudi Arabia-France[why did you think so many terrorist in France?]-Honduras-Brazil etc)so vigorously.
The worst of it is we are throwing our wealth-the climate- and the populations of this world away with every bomb-missile-drone-cannon and tank we sell or give away(hell we even arm our enemies to have someone to fight) in our love of war-money and power. And all those resources that could have been used to repair the damage we have done to our planet-educate our children-provide health care for all-make the transition to renewable energy or virtually any other need that is and will be sacrificed on the alter of war.
Welcome to the 6th great extinction-brought to you by greed, apathy, and appeasement.

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Jos Arbex Jrsays:

September 15, 2016 at 11:12 am

yeap. syria, libya and drones killing hundreds or thousands of innocent civilians (not to mention 2003) have nothing to do with the rise and growth of isis. seriously? if we must criticize trump (and we sure do), let's do for what is wrong with him, not for one of the few things he says that makes sense. unless, of course, you're riding the same boat as joan walsh.

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Sandra Fordsays:

September 15, 2016 at 5:16 pm

Excuse me but you need to re-check who wrote this article (hint: it wasn't Joan Walsh) and it was the invasion of Iraq that caused ISIL. You should try reading some actual facts.

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Jos Arbex Jrsays:

September 15, 2016 at 7:03 pm

Sorry, you'ré the one who needs to read things carefully. First of, I did refer to Iraq (2003); second, I mentioned the GROWTH of Isis, not only its birth; third, of I são that "a" is in the same boat with "b", it means that "a" os not "b", therefore your "hint" is useless. Rgds

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Richard Strawsays:

September 15, 2016 at 9:14 am

If you want discussion of policy and it's consequences get Jill Stein onto the debate stage(Johnson could come too-but why anybody would vote for the clueless is beyond me-but then Trump will be there).
The change we and the rest of the world needs will not come from the duopoly- they are part of the establishment that has brought us to this point in the pursuit of money and power, expecting them to do something different is like turning lead to gold-won't happen.
On the support of the war(s) alone with it's attendant failed states- bombing of civilians and their vital infrastructure(hospitals and water supplies)-the spread of terrorists- and now both the Saudis and the Israelis are being armed to the teeth by us(and to hell with the Yemenis and Palestinians)- and the saber rattling at Russia should be enough to make all of us very wary-as her finger will be on the button if elected-and Trump-the Democrats should be getting ready to do the same to him that the Republicans have done to Obama for the last eight years-they set the precedence- hoist them on their own petard.
I will vote for the platform which represents positive change and a re-alignment of our military posture that will both free up resources needed to make the transition to a renewable future and possibly change the dynamic around terrorism(us included-I'm sure that by now there are many terrorized victims of drone strikes) with other than military solutions.
I will vote for Jill Stein and Ajuma Baraka -I hope others of you will consider voting For a future and join me as if your life depends on it, because it really does.-How much more time do you think we have left to address the climate crisis(which is accelerating as more and more "tipping points" are passed)? Do you think that either Hillary or Donald will do anything substantial while they are beholden(if not part of the owners) to the forces trying to get the last dollar out of a dieing system(do they think it won't affect them?) and ripping the planet(and history-culture-treaties-agreements-eco-systems-poisoning water-land and air) apart in pursuit of those dollars. The ones leading the way-Native American women-their families -the Tribes across the Americas-supported with delegations from BLM and environmental and social activists. And the only presidential candidate to show up was the Green ticket with both Jill and Ajuma present(with an arrest warrant now) who stayed over night in order to consult with the people there. And Bernie is the only dem making vigorous support of the Tribes-but then he hardly a dem is he?
And the Democrats field Hillary who has joined the 1% on the dollars supplied by the very forces has brought this climate disruption-all she had to do(and her husband)is talk the talk to them-do you really think she won't walk the walk the the way the corporate class wants?
Voting for the duopoly is endorsing the 6th great extinction-now in progress and getting more severe with each increase in the CO2 load from our current energy paradigm. And when the ocean gets too hot to support the life that gives us the major portion of our oxygen, the sea levels make coastal living impossible, and it is too hot to grow food it will be too late-we have, maybe,30 years to make the transition and only then if we get serious about getting rid of fossil fuel and can reduce our CO2 emissions by half in the next 15 years or less according to Phd Mann and other researchers monitoring ocean temperatures and ice melts(glaciers also).

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George Hoffmansays:

September 14, 2016 at 4:20 pm

Hillary Clinton has had a long career in public service as a seasoned politician. I agree with Eric Alterman on that point. But she voted for the Iraq War resolution in the Senate, and as secretary of state she lobbied Obama very hard to intervene in the Libyan civil war. And he admitted to Jeffrey Goldberg in a interview in The Atlantic that his intervention in Libya was his worst mistake he has made as president. Libya, once an oil-rich nation, is now Somalia on the Mediterranean. And Hillary revealed her true self in that YouTube video which went vital when she expressed her take on rebels killing Col. Muammar Gaddafi, "We came, we saw, he died." Her identity politics and faux feminism is a re-branding to appeal to managerial professionals and aging baby-boomer feminists within the Democratic Party who form the ranks of fervent Clintonistas. Thomas Frank in "Listen Here Liberals" pointed this out and it accounted as a symptom of how elites and operatives have abandoned these formerly loyal Democratic working class voters who are leaving the party to vote for Donald Trump. To be quite blunt, I agree with Chris Hedges, who wrote in his latest column at www.truthdig.com, "Hillary...is running as Mitt Romney in drag." But my question for Eric is: Have you taken a sip of the Kool-Aid in office water cooler at The Nation as Joan Walsh apparently has when it comes to your strident defense of Hillary? And by the way, Eric do you read The Atlantic on a regular basis? Because it is far from a "high-brow" magazine. Just look at some of the staff writers: David Frum, GWB's speechwriter who penned "the axis of evil," and then there's Peter Beinart, who as the executive editor at The New Republic at the time was a prominent "liberal hawk" (whatever that is) for the Iraq War. Both now write columns for The Atlantic. And it leans to the right on many issues it covers in its politics though there are notable exceptions such as Ta-Nehisi Coates. But I think pollsters may be wrong about Hillary being the winner in the race as they were about how the British voters were about that Brexit vote. Things are ugly in the Rust Belt. Many disgruntled white, working class voters in Youngstown, Ohio, changed their party affiliation to the GOP so they could vote for Trump in the primary. The Democrat and the GOP party chairmen said they have never seen anything like it in their long careers in local politics. Hillary may just rue the day she called them a "basket of deplorables" as Mitt Romney probably does with his crack about those "47%" who are deadbeats on the federal dole and would never vote for him.

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Charlie Pricesays:

September 14, 2016 at 12:58 pm

Yes, it's the media - they've been too soft on Trump. They haven't been egregiously one-sided throughout the campaign, to the point that the vast majority of Americans have tuned them out completely. Just think, if it weren't for that one intrepid citizen with his phone camera, we never would've known that Trump collapsed at Ground Zero and was thrown into a van like a side of beef.